


Quisling's Quest

by freifraufischer



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-19
Updated: 2015-01-19
Packaged: 2018-03-08 07:24:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3200528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freifraufischer/pseuds/freifraufischer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura Roslin and Caprica Six live in two worlds divided by uncommon faith in the bitter hell of Cylon Occupied New Caprica. Around the Resistence Webisodes between "Lay Down Your Burdens" and "Occupation". The last chapter takes place after "Taking a Break From All Your Worries ". This is basically a character piece between Laura Roslin and Caprica Six.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

One might suppose that among the other Cylons, Caprica Six might find peace. That among dozens of copies of herself she could fade into the mass. That is was what a Cylons were supposed to be, one of many numbers. That's was what Caprica was not. When she walked among the other Cylons she was a hero, or a prophet, or a fool. Or all of those things at once, and she wasn't particularly sure she wanted to be any of them at all.

It had been simple once. Her purpose had been clear when she came to Caprica and lived among the humans. She had seen them all as indifferent, self-absorbed, lazy, and undeserving of the place in which God had set them. They did not love His creation. They did not care for each other. They were arrogant fools. And they would die for that arrogance. Those were things that Caprica had known when she first walked among them—as surely as she had known that God loved her and had a place for her among the elect.

She knew all these things as she selected her victim. As she seduced her prey. She knew all these things with every fiber of her being as she used Gaius Baltar to destroy his own people. And the moment that all of that righteousness came down around her head was the same moment that should have been her greatest joy. The destruction of the human race.

It was a cruel twist of fate, or a plan of God's well beyond her simple understanding, that the man who represented the worst of humanity, this weak, arrogant, self-absorbed man, would be the one to teach her what it truly felt like to love. And she only knew this fully as he was cradled in her arms protected from the nuclear holocaust she had brought down around them.

For a while she had believed that there was another like her, an Eight who had come to the same understanding that she had. Together they had done the impossible: they had stopped the war, and brought peace to humanity. But loving a human was not as easy at a distance as it was when you were with them. Their faults were magnified under observation, and Caprica had seen the self-loathing turn to hate in Boomer's eyes. Privately she wondered if the other Cylon did not have the strength to love because she had come to that emotion by programming, and by deception. Nothing built on lies stood very long, or with a foundation that could withstand even the slightest storm.

When Boomer looked at her old friends she saw loss. When Caprica looked at Baltar she saw a miracle. A gift from God she hardly understood, and didn't deserve. And so she could accept his faults, even if she did not like them. She could stroke his beard in bed and see him as what he could be, even if he was not able to see that himself.

This was not to say she was never angry with Gaius. Far from it, her anger with him started deep in her stomach and welled up in her like a terrible volcano. But unlike Boomer, whose resentment festered, hers came to the surface quickly, and passed eventually. After all, who was she to question the gifts that God had given her, and one of those gifts was Gaius Baltar.

This was not something she cared to explain to the others. She had tried once, to explain it to one of the Threes, but found that it was an impossible task. The gulf that had developed between her and the others was deep, and growing deeper. Paradoxically, it was among her kind that she felt most alone. It was in looking at her own face that she saw strangers. And it was among the human population on New Caprica that she felt much of that old purpose. They might hate and fear her. Certainly they did both. But they hated her as a Cylon, a Six, one of many. Anonymously. It was among the humans that she walked when she wished to be alone with her thoughts.

As she walked down the muddy street the humans moved away from her and looked away, as if perhaps they thought that if they did not see her she would not be there. She could probably walk through the entire city like this, undisturbed except for her thoughts.

And for a dirty pyramid ball that had rolled across the ground and stopped at her feet. She frowned and bent down to examine the ball as if it was a foreign object, though she knew them quite well. She had loved to go to pyramid games when she lived on Caprica before the holocaust. She could almost close her eyes now and bring herself to that place again. Well, she could, but she rather preferred the memory to the visualization.

A little boy of perhaps ten came running after the ball, stopping short several feet from her with a look of terror in his eyes. A look his parents probably taught him. After all, you have to be taught fear. Though, she reflected, it probably wasn't an unfounded fear. She smiled at him. "What's your name?"

"Marcus."

"Is this your ball, Marcus?"

He nodded.

"What position do you play?"

He mumbled something that she thought was, "Defenseman. Can… can I have the ball back?"

She thought he might have just run away in terror, except that she knew they didn't have many things like pyramid balls and he would be in trouble for having lost it. She smiled again and held it out for him to take, though not extending her arm all the way so that he had to come to her to get it.

Several adults, including the head of the Union, Tyrol, were watching, and she could sense that he wanted to step between her and the child. He didn't, though, and Marcus came closer and took the ball from her hand. She ruffled his hair before he could sprint off.

The threat abated for now, the city folk went on about their business, though several kept an eye on the Cylon. It was so rare for skinjobs, as she knew they were called, to walk among the population without Centurions.

It didn't speak well for her people, she thought, that their idea of living in harmony with humanity was subjugation and segregation. Someday God would make them pay for their sins, just has as He had made humanity pay for theirs.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

The first winter on New Caprica was the coldest time Laura Roslin could remember. Many would probably recall the previous summer as one of the happiest times, when they could forget what it was to live in the steel shells of ships running for their lives. It had been a summer of marriages and even Roslin had wanted to believe the gods were shining down on humanity again. The difference was that while she had wanted peace, she knew in her heart that this was merely an interlude and that one day Cylon raiders would again block out the sun.

But among happy people she was a gloomy prophet to be in turns humored, ridiculed, and pitied. She had hated the pity the most.

That summer she had her own escapes, first with alcohol and then to smoking the river herbs that temporarily allowed her to see the world as others did. But she always sobered, and the high faded, and the world was as she knew it to be again.

It was during that summer when Laura had understood who her friends really were, and who were merely hangers on. She had known that the presidency attracted the leeches of any society as well as the best and the brightest. She had known it during Richard Adar's administration, but it was so clear to her now and if she ever returned to the office Laura would be thankful for the chance to have seen people's true faces.

Some people had surprised her. Across the school tent sat Tory Foster, her former aide, trying to help a young boy with his math work that was giving him so much trouble. If Laura had to choose the person who would still be with her a year out of power, it would not have been this ambitious and self-assured young woman.

Tory had been offered a job by President Baltar's Chief of Staff that would have allowed her to remain close to the seat of power. She had turned him down in favor of following Roslin into exile among the school children. She had once tried to tell Tory that she didn't have to stay, but the young woman had just smiled at Laura and said, "I would follow you into the coldest reaches of hell."

None of them had known hell was so close at hand.

The Cylons had come just in time to save Gaius Baltar from a revolution, and at her most cynical she was sure that there was some relation between those events.

She would have thought that they would have come to her school in the first days, that she would be forced to pay a price for those she had causally ordered tossed out an airlock. At the very least she had thought they would come to burn the books.

Weren't books the first casualty of new social order?

They hadn't come for her or for her books or for her students and for all of those things she was eternally grateful.

However, just as she had known that the summer had been an interlude, she also knew that these early days of occupation were simply the rising chords. There were more dark days ahead.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

The night had been better than the day had been. By the time she had gotten back to Colonial One Baltar had sobered up, and had not yet again disappeared into a drunken stupor. The sex had been bad, but it had been bad for weeks, and she couldn't really have said whose fault that was. She suspected both of them, though she didn't dare breath that to Baltar, who had enough sexual difficulties these days without it being pointed out.

The next day was worse. She had gotten into an argument with several of the others over the humans' Temple. They had known for a week or so that they were hiding a cache of weapons there, and though she knew the matter had to be dealt with she was loathe to do it with Centurions. They were like children whose judgment could only be trusted with simple tasks. Go here, kill this, build that. Cylon Centurions made poor policemen and worse peacekeepers.

But she was overruled, as seemed to be common these days, and she had left the compound to get some air and think, but aware of the time so that she was back behind the gates when the raid happened. Humans might have redeeming value in her eyes, but they would still defend their sacred space.

She found herself walking around the part of the city she had met the little boy in the day before, and stopped briefly at the makeshift pyramid court, mildly disappointed that there wasn't another game going on. She missed watching games.

Through a nearby tent flap she heard arguing, and stepped closer to investigate. Perhaps it was nothing, in the stress of life on New Caprica there were a lot of arguments. It was the few snippets she could hear that drew her interest. Temple. Risk.

When she pulled back the tent flap the two stopped talking. A balding older man and a middle aged woman with glasses in a large sweeter. Caprica knew who she was immediately. Laura Roslin had earned her reputation among the Cylons, even if she wasn't in power any longer. Before she could ask the other man his name he pushed past her back out through the doorway and she was left alone with the former President of the Twelve Colonies of Kobel.

"Can I help you?" she asked coldly.

Not exactly wanting to say she had been eavesdropping, Caprica gestured around the tent. "This is a school?"

Roslin put her hand on the back of one of her pupil's empty chairs like she was trying to protect the children that weren't even there. "Yes, this is a school. What do you want?" She repeated it again with a stronger challenged in her voice.

"But you are the President."

She raised an eyebrow. "A little behind the times aren't you? I'm just a private citizen. I'm just a schoolteacher." Roslin began cleaning up the school room as if the act of doing normal chores would distract her from the killing machine standing in this sacred space.

Caprica rather doubted there was anything she could do right now that the older woman wouldn't pick up on immediately. She laughed, but only abortively and with a smile that had little joy in it, and took a few steps closer to her. "I doubt you were ever just a schoolteacher, and you certainly aren't now. Leoben speaks highly of you. At least until you ordered him tossed out an airlock after promising him safety."

"I do not have to justify myself to you."

"Perhaps not now, but someday you'll have to pay for that."

"I'm sure the gods will have much to call me to account for when I die, but that time is not now, and you are no god."

"No. No, I am not a god," the Cylon answered soberly.

"And I am not a saint," Roslin replied back coolly.

"That's good to know, because this is not heaven."

"Hell given form, created by man." If the last part of her statement had surprised Roslin, she didn't show it, and when Caprica tried to look in her eyes all she saw was the flare of the sunlight coming through the open flap, reflected in her glasses.

If there was a personification of evil living among the humans to most Cylons, the name that might come up was Laura Roslin. Adama could be admired. Zarek in his prison cell since the beginning of the occupation could be pitied. Roslin was someone to hate. A ruthless bitch with a stubborn tendency to cling onto life well after it should have been snuffed out of her. Yet, alone now, watching her straighten desks and hang children's drawings on the walls, one could forget those things and see just the woman. Just as away from those that knew her by legend, Caprica could simply be a Six.

Silently she picked up an eraser and began helping the former Colonial leader clean off the blackboard.


	2. Chapter 2

Outside of the school tent, Maya had been watching for trouble for the last two hours. She, Tory, and a few of the children's mothers had volunteered to stand watch after the Cylon attack on the Temple. It was not so much that they expected to stop a squad of Centurions if they decided to rampage through the schoolhouse, at least not on an intellectual level. But if a fire fight broke out in the street outside, a little warning would allow them to get the children under the desks and hopefully out of the way of stray bullets.

So it was Maya whose voice Laura heard call out, "Skinjob. The Blonde."

The Blonde. D'Anna. Leoben. Cavil. Some of the humanoid Cylon models were referred to by names of ones they had known within the Fleet. The Blond was one of the exceptions, because aside from the Pegasus crew they hadn't really seen her much as a person. It made her easier to hate, and at least on New Caprica they had had particular reasons. She tended to be the coldest. The most vicious. The most fanatical. It had been one of the reasons Roslin's encounter with one of them a few days before had been so out of place.

There wasn't really much to be done at her approach. The children couldn't run away from every Cylon because there were Cylons everywhere, and Roslin didn't change her lesson plan. They didn't teach the children anything in the school house that the Cylons would find objectionable. Mostly because they knew that twenty children couldn't possibly keep a secret, and there were children of members of the New Caprica Police in the room whose parents couldn't be trusted not to step on their fellow human beings for an extra ration of rice or alcohol.

So Roslin was teaching when Six came in. She always thought of this one as Baltar's Whore… even though this wasn't likely the one she had seen on Caprica before the attack. It felt nice to keep some of those things clear in her mind. That Baltar was a traitor, and she had to help save humanity from him.

The children looked up from their work as the Cylon passed their desks, looking down at each of their papers to see what they were working on. Laura thought she had a weird little smirk on her face, but it was more the children she was watching. Some of them looked terrified, but some of them had the same bitter hatred their parents had developed. "School's over for the day, everyone line up, the younger kids with Maya and the older ones with Ms. Foster please. Fifteen-year-olds, remember you have homework tonight."

Maya and Ms. Foster. That basically described her relationship with the two women as much as what the children called them. Maya was the sweet older sibling, Tory was an adult not to be addressed familiarly by any but those she chose to give that permission too. The effect was to make Tory seem older, even though the two women were of an age with each other.

Tory gave the Cylon a look and then glanced at Laura, and she could tell that her aide didn't want to leave her alone with the machine, but Laura wasn't moving and one look from her made Tory realize that this was not a point to argue. So as the children filed out of the tent quickly and quietly, the two women were left alone, Roslin at one end of the school tent and Six at the other.

"The children don't normally go home at this time," the Cylon observed.

"They weren't going to learn anything with you lurking over them. What do you want?"

There was that mirthless laugh that made Roslin think that the Cylons could imitate every detail of humanity except for humor. Laughter was a window into the soul, and machines were vacant things. "It's still hard to picture you as a school teacher, Roslin."

"It's hard for a lot of people to think of me as anything else. I ask again, what do you want with my school?" Ice slipped into Laura's tone and she knew she was walking a dangerous line, but then again, eventually they would come for her if she resisted them or not, so she had little to lose.

"You don't like me being here."

"A school is a sacred place of learning."

"Like a Temple? You didn't seem to have much trouble violating your own sacred space." She gestured to Roslin, and she rather supposed that was a personal you and not a collective one.

"I'm not involved with the Resistance."

"Of course you are. You are their focal point. Their noble and suffering leader. Much more dangerous now than you ever were as president, because the people now see you suffering among them. Do you think Adama knows that, wherever he is?"

"Admiral Adama has other things on his mind. Like rescuing us. And if you had proof I was involved with the Resistance I'd be under arrest."

Six had been walking towards her and had reached out and took one of Laura's wrists, holding it up between the two of them with a thumb on her pulse point. The Cylon's grip was strong and Laura thought if she tried to break away from the touch she would probably break her hand. But it was also gentle and sexual as well. It reminded her that this woman/thing was probably programmed to seduce everything she touched.

"You seem so sure you understand us, and that we do not understand what is going on in front of us. Adama is gone. He's gone on to find earth, and now you've taken his place as the heart of these people. The pulse of their hopes flows through you. You resist just by breathing."

The Cylon was now close enough that Laura could feel the other woman's breath as she spoke. See it in the cold air between them. Laura wondered if this was threat or seduction. Or if this woman was capable of not being seductive. Still, she broke her hand away from the Cylon's grip and to her relief the other woman let go. "I don't understand you at all. I never have. But I'm equally sure you don't understand us."

Roslin walked away from Six and busied herself straightening chairs again, just as she had the first time they had met.

"I don't understand you." The admission made Laura stop and look up, but she didn't say anything, and the Cylon continued, "The more you lose, the more you fight. When you run out of space ships you build them out of scraps and chewing gum. When you run out of guns you fight with knives. When you run out of knives I'm sure you will attack us with your bare hands. You were ready to abandon this place before we came. You never wanted to settle here in the first place. Yet, you resent us being here."

"Of course we won't stop fighting. We resent you being here because we didn't ask for you to come and save us. You can't destroy everything—kill everything—and then expect to walk into this settlement like liberators showered with flowers." It was Roslin's turn to advance on Six, looking at the other woman over her glasses like she would a pupil who had misbehaved in her class. "We brought you on ourselves. We created you in hubris. We never asked ourselves what we have done to deserve survival as a species. I know the answer to that question now. We survive because we fight. Humanity wins as long as there is one human left standing. When the gods look down on us in judgment, you and I, whose soul do you think they will find lacking? Me for the three Cylons I have ordered killed? Or you for the billions of innocents you have slaughtered? Is that why you come to my schoolhouse? To find more innocent blood to spill for your God? What kind of God would be pleased with what you have done?"

The question hung in the air and Laura thought she had hit home. Six stood in silence watching her. "God is merciful and is pleased by love and mercy. That is why we are here. To show you His mercy."

It was Laura's turn to laugh without humor now. "This is mercy? This isn't peace. This isn't life. This is slow death. We resist because we have answered the question. We deserve to survive and with every human you kill… the whole grows stronger in it's will to survive you."

Six looked like she wanted to say something, but when she looked into Laura's eyes, she just looked away.

Caprica always seemed to walk away from encounters with Laura Roslin feeling like she knew less than before them. She thought she understood the look behind the human woman's eyes. Hate was an emotion she understood well enough. She had known it for a long time when she lived on Caprica both before and after the holocaust. She had first hated the humans she lived among, and then she had hated her fellow Cylons as they walked around the ruins of colonial civilization as if God would reveal Himself if they just continued a surreal imitation of human life.

It was what she had hated most, watching Fives and Eights and Threes and even other Sixes walking around in groups drinking coffee and reading newspapers. It had been a self-loathing hatred. She had seen God in the eyes of people in the streets of Caprica City. She had seen Him in the eyes of the humans, and she saw nothing in the eyes of her fellow Cylons.

The war had made her empty, and it was only among the enemy that she saw what she wanted most. The love of God. It wasn't an easy love, a simple love, it was one they fought with. It was what made her fascinated by humanity and angry with it. She wanted to touch them tenderly and rip them asunder at the same time. And it had become personified for her in Laura Roslin, a woman she hated and liked at the same time. A woman she wanted to protect, and destroy at once. Just as she loved Gaius and loathed him at the same time, though she rather doubted either Roslin or Baltar would much like the comparison.

She didn't know where she was walking until she saw D'Anna sitting on the ground playing with a scruffy dog who looked like everything else on New Caprica. Hungry. It was an incongruous image, because to her mind the Threes were the most cold blooded among them. She leaned against a light post and watched until the other Cylon looked up and a little self-consciously smiled.

"I think I'm the only one who feeds him, every time I come by here his bowl is overturned." She stood up and offered her hand. "I don't think we've met. You're Caprica Six."

"Last time I checked." She hated being recognized. It just reminded her that she wasn't one of them anymore. One of twelve. "You're the one they call D'Anna?"

"Yeah, I haven't really gotten out of the habit. Too much time among the humans I guess." Too much time among the humans meant a lot of things. All the individuals, the Cylons that found themselves separate from the collective, had spent too much time among the humans in the eyes of the rest. It was a contaminant, not a mark of pride. Something to be washed off, forgotten, erased. And never went away. D'Anna tilted her head to the side, "You look like you are somewhere else."

Caprica smiled a little sheepishly, "Thinking about a conversation I just had with Laura Roslin."

Something about the name made D'Anna laugh. "Don't think too much about her, that's a puzzle that will break your brain. I know, I've tried." At a raised eyebrow from Six she elaborated, "I was in the Colonial press corps and I remember sitting in the back of press briefings trying to figure out what was going through her head. Humans are so easy to read, but I never could figure out her. It was like watching a musical composer slipping a little melody under three other themes. One person would see one theme and think she was talking directly to him, and the man next to him would hear something completely different, and his neighbor something else entirely. You could catch tiny shreds of her thought process, but as soon as you pulled on them to unravel it they would snap."

"We will need to co-opt her or else she will be dangerous to us."

"She is dangerous to us, and she won't be co-opted. She's not Gaius Baltar. She has faith in her mission. Eventually, sooner rather than later I suspect, she will be exterminated."


	3. Chapter 3

Caprica had died twice thus far. The first time her body was torn to ribbons by the window glass on the leading edge of the shockwave from a nuclear explosion that killed four million human beings. The second time she had been standing ten feet from a man wearing an explosive vest loaded with nails designed to inflict as much damage as possible. Forty people had died in that attack. Those were human deaths. Final. Finite.

Hers was an infinite cycle. She was born, she lived, she died, she resurrected. She understood human life. At least she thought she did. She could not fathom human death, and she certainly couldn't understand walking into death willingly. Life was a gift from God. To throw it away was a sacrilege, to hurl oneself off into the void without any chance of redemption or love for eternity.

She had seen many things since she walked among the humans after her first birth. She had seen many things that would frighten someone of lesser faith in Him, and yet remained unafraid, yet it was this one act of defiance. This open eyed march into damnation that terrified her. It terrified them all, she thought; at least she never thought she would see that look in Cavil's eyes.

She stood at the door of Laura Roslin's cell trying to decide if she should go in, or if this was silly, a childish lack of faith. She had decided it was and was just about to leave when she turned to see Baltar standing watching her.

It wasn't actually Baltar, at least not the impotent drug addict he had become. It was her Baltar, her idealized form of him. "You think Laura Roslin has answers for you?"

"No, of course not," she shook her head and took a step away from the door to walk past her delusion. She knew he'd follow her.

"Or are you afraid that she does? That that woman has a closer relationship with her gods than you have with yours? That her gods are stronger than yours? Or are you worried that her faith is stronger than your faith instead?"

"God loves me."

"Of course He does, that's why He's laid out such an easy course for you," Baltar replied as he turned around to face her again, but didn't move from where he was leaning against the wall.

She stopped after a few paces. "It is not my place to question God's plans."

"Oh, are we pretending you haven't walked down that path before? It's His plan to destroy humanity. It's His plan to save humanity from itself. You haven't a frakking clue what His plan is, and you are afraid that Laura Roslin does."

His voice echoed in the prison hallway, even though she knew she was the only one that could hear him. His words stung like arrows, and reminded her again of the glass from her first death. She remembered again what that had felt like. Her sacrifice for love.

There were some that said it hurt worse each time you died again, and perhaps it was so, but it was the feeling of a thousand cuts of glass that she remembered when her faith wavered. It was that pain that she called upon in her most vivid memories as punishment when her faith was not strong enough. Yet no matter how much she called upon those memories today she remained in the hallway in front of Laura Roslin's cell. She remained lost.

Baltar took her hand and placed it on the lock, letting her feel the warmth on her palm as she heard the metal click and the door open.

When Colonials were brought into the prison they were stripped, deloused, and given a gray jump suit. The cells were small and the cold from the floor radiated up through their bare feet sending a chill into every part of their body. It was meant to break them down, strip away their human pride and open them up to repent their sins and accept God in isolation.

Caprica had her doubts as if this was really what it was designed to do. Many Cylons seemed bent on undermining their cause here.

Whatever was the goal, it obviously wasn't working on Laura Roslin. The red headed Colonial leader was curled in the corner of her cell with her back to her, though Caprica doubted very much that she was unaware of her presence.

"I looked for you at your school after my download, but you had already been arrested."

Roslin turned to look at her now, her eyes narrowed but for the first time Caprica could really see into them, without the reflections in her glasses. The ice in her eyes made Six almost wish she had the glasses back. "Your friends were apparently quicker."

"They think you were involved in what happened today."

Roslin was silent, but Baltar laughed, standing behind her in the door frame. She wasn't sure that he was laughing at the former president, or at Six, though she suspected he was laughing at her. "She wasn't involved. Laura Roslin doesn't get her hands dirty that way. She probably sleeps better at night allowing others to send young people off to die."

Caprica ignored him. Or tried to. "Some might take your silence as assent."

"I suspect those who would do that, would read any action on my part as assent."

"She has a point," delusion Baltar put in from behind her.

"How do you spend your days teaching children to read and your nights sending young men off to carry bombs into public places?" She didn't say anything, but Caprica thought she saw the woman's eyes avert for a moment. "Suicide is a sin."

That raised both of Roslin's eyebrows.

"God did not give humanity life to throw away."

The schoolteacher's eyes narrowed now. "Is this the same God that sent you on a mission to destroy humanity?"

"We misunderstood Him."

"Twenty billion lives is quite a misunderstanding."

"The Cylon values life."

Caprica could have sworn the room had just become colder, had she been bothered by such trivialities as temperature. "You believe you are on a holy crusade?"

It was the first substantial question Roslin had asked Caprica and it seemed like one with an obvious answer. "Yes."

"Your God sees value in all life?"

"Yes," Caprica nodded.

"How valuable is a war waged without sacrifice?"

It was Caprica's turn to be silent, and Baltar came out of the doorway to stand next to her. "Be careful, she sees the cracks in the foundation of your house built of lies."

"War is ennobling."

This time Roslin smiled. "There is nothing noble about killing. And there is nothing noble in a war where you risk nothing. If you believe your God calls you to battle you should be willing to go without the assurance that when you die you will simply download into a brand new body."

"And it's more noble for an old woman to sit back in safety while she sends young men to die?" Caprica thought the challenge would bring the conversation back to her control, but Roslin's gaze did not waiver.

"It seems to me that you are the young race. Fighting wars without personal cost on grounds of faith that does not cost you anything. I'll stand before judgment knowing I did my best. What will you tell your God? Will He love you with blood on your hands?"

Caprica reached down with a sudden fury and grabbed the Colonial leader by the front of her jump suit lifting her up into the air. "God knows my faith."

"Faith, or arrogance?"

For that last bit of defiance she tossed Laura back into the corner she had been sitting in with a satisfying thud, but regretted it almost immediately. She went to move towards her, but Baltar put a hand on her shoulder and shook his head.

She had made a mistake in anger that could not be taken away so easily.

She had allowed the sin of pride to consume her.

Without another word Caprica walked out of the cell, defeated.

Caprica couldn't sleep. Not that she needed to sleep. She could drive her body on for days without it. She could withstand exhaustion and starvation without the least bit of difficulty. It wasn't the lack of sleep that bothered her. It was that she couldn't do it. To her it was a physical manifestation of what the others said about her behind her back. She could no longer control her body anymore than she could control her emotions. Lying in the bed next to Baltar she could not give him pleasure or support, and he could not give her peace even in their most intimate settings.

Yet more proof, not that she needed more, that they were living a pretense of a relationship—shallow, cold, and impotent. And it was her fault, because she was shallow, and cold, and empty inside. She wanted to love, and to be loved, but could she do either of those things without being human? She was beginning to doubt it. But that did not change her desire for those emotions. If anything it made that desire stronger.

She had been watching Gaius breath for an hour. She petted his hair as if he were a child and she his mother—mystified and gratified at the simple miracle of life. She wanted to hold him, to share the him with no one, yet she stopped herself from the selfish act by looking at what was happening to Leoben. You cannot imprison that who you love, nor can you protect them from their own humanity. And of the many things Gaius Baltar was, he was most of all human.

She slipped out of the bed and pulled on a robe to cover her naked form and slipped quietly out of the living quarters and along the halls of Colonial One to the president's office. She saw a light on and pushed the door open quietly, seeing Three sitting at Gaius's desk, working on something. An irrational anger welled up inside her at the idea of Three sitting in his chair and using his desk like she owned the place. Though they did, and that was a truth Caprica really couldn't deny in the end. Just because something was true, though, didn't make it right.

"I didn't realize you had been elected President of the Twelve Colonies."

The voice made Three look up, and almost in opposition to Caprica's intent, D'Anna smiled. "It seemed like as good a place as any to work, and the desk is nice. One of the carpenters was making it for Roslin before they landed here, but he's since been performing more pressing needs."

The remains of humanity were distinctly short on truly useful skills such as farming and carpentry, and it had resulted in a great deal of their misery on New Caprica even before the Cylons arrived.

"A shame she never got to use it." It was a sentiment that surprised Caprica as much as it might have Three. It was part of the boiling caldron of emotions she had about the former President. Hate, fear, loathing, admiration. To banish that fruitless line of thought Caprica picked up one of the files that Three was working on. "I know this woman."

The dark skinned inscrutable face that stared out at her from the identity picture was one of those who worked in Roslin's school. D'Anna nodded, "Tory Foster. She's one of the Roslin loyalists. I think she might have even tried to steal the election from Baltar."

That comment provoked a new stab of hatred in Caprica's heart, both for the young woman in the picture and for her boss. It was anger on Gaius' behalf, righteous indignation mixed with religious fervor. A mere human being could not fight the Hand of God.

She put the file down and opened the next. Colonel Saul Tigh. And the next, Samuel Anders. And the next, Galen Tyrol. "These are the resistance leaders." At least the ones they suspected, some with less justification than others. "What are you doing?"

"Coming up with a list of those that will need to be executed if the civil unrest gets worse."

"That's not your place," Caprica reacted instinctively to protect Baltar's authority, such as it was.

Three apparently could see her thought process and she gave a patronizing smile. "With our dear President's permission, of course. Besides, that's not the pile of people going on my list. Cavil is taking care of neutralizing Tigh, and removing the others would be too disruptive to the fabric of human society."

Putting the files back down on the pile she picked up the top three on the other pile. The top was Tom Zarek. She couldn't bring herself to have too much outrage at the prospect of Gaius' ungrateful vice president finding a sticky end. The next made her raise an eyebrow. "Cally Tyrol?"

"The wife of a resistance leader, her loss should take much of the fight out of him. And she murdered Eight in cold blood while on Galactica. It would do Boomer some good to feel power over her."

"You can't feel power over a dead body." Three didn't seem interested in rising to that bait, so Caprica flipped open the next file. It shouldn't have surprised her, but looking into the face of Laura Roslin did. She held up the picture to D'Anna by way of asking for justification for that one.

"You have to be kidding, she was the first on the list."

"You won't advocate killing a pyramid player because his loss would damage the fabric of the community but you don't think murdering their school teacher would make them explode?"

"Their anger will pass quickly and once it is done it is a permanent fact. Humanity gets no second chances at life and they do not get to face their murders again."

The last was a pointed comment directed at Six. She had broken their highest law. She had committed the first act of violence by one Cylon on another. And the Threes in particular had never forgiven her for it. She didn't respond, though, but put the file down. "This is not why we came here."

"It's not why you came here, no, but your plan has failed and God's favor is shifting to those of us who are still Cylon at heart."

There was an insult in that statement. She was not, in Three's opinion, a real Cylon anymore. But what was she?

Three rose up from the desk and leaned against it looking right into Caprica's eyes. "You were wrong. God favors those who seek His plans, instead of making up their own."

And there it was, spoken aloud. They were turning their back on God, and searching for yet another false prophet. Caprica wondered in her stunned silence, if that prophet was standing in front of her. The Cylons were abandoning her.


	4. Chapter 4

Caprica couldn't sleep. Not that she needed to sleep. She could drive her body on for days without it. She could withstand exhaustion and starvation without the least bit of difficulty. It wasn't the lack of sleep that bothered her. It was that she couldn't do it. To her it was a physical manifestation of what the others said about her behind her back. She could no longer control her body anymore than she could control her emotions. Lying in the bed next to Baltar she could not give him pleasure or support, and he could not give her peace even in their most intimate settings.

Yet more proof, not that she needed more, that they were living a pretense of a relationship—shallow, cold, and impotent. And it was her fault, because she was shallow, and cold, and empty inside. She wanted to love, and to be loved, but could she do either of those things without being human? She was beginning to doubt it. But that did not change her desire for those emotions, if anything it made that desire stronger.

She had been watching Gaius breath for an hour. She pet his hair as if he were a child and she his mother—mystified and gratified at the simple miracle of life. She wanted to hold him, to share the him with no one, yet she stopped herself from the selfish act by looking at what was happening to Leoben. You cannot imprison that who you love, nor can you protect them from their own humanity. And of the many things Gaius Baltar was, he was most of all human.

She slipped out of the bed and pulled on a robe to cover her naked form and slipped quietly out of the living quarters and along the halls of Colonial one to the president's office. She saw a light on and pushed the door open quietly, seeing Three sitting at Gaius's desk, working on something. An irrational anger welled up inside her at the idea of Three sitting in his chair and using his desk like she owned the place. Though they did, and that was a truth Caprica really couldn't deny in the end. Just because something was true though, didn't make it right.

"I didn't realize you had been elected President of the Twelve Colonies."

The voice made Three look up, and almost in opposition to Caprica's intent, D'Anna smiled. "It seemed like as good a place as any to work, and the desk is nice. One of the carpenters was making it for Roslin before they landed here, but he's since been performing more pressing needs."

The remains of humanity were distinctly short on truly useful skills such as farming and carpentry, and it had resulted in a great deal of their misery on New Caprica even before the Cylons arrived.

"A shame she never got to use it." It was a sentiment that surprised Caprica as much as it might have Three. It was part of the boiling caldron of emotions she had about the former President. Hate, fear, loathing, admiration. To banish that fruitless line of thought Caprica picked up one of the files that Three was working on. "I know this woman."

The dark skinned inscrutable face that stared out at her from the identity picture was one of those who worked in Roslin's school. D'Anna nodded, "Tory Foster. She's one of the Roslin loyalists. I think she might have even tried to steal the election from Baltar."

That comment provoked a new stab of hatred in Caprica's heart, both for the young woman in the picture and for her boss. It was anger on Gaius' behalf, righteous indignation mixed with religious fervor. A mere human being could not fight the Hand of God.

She put the file down and opened the next. Colonel Saul Tigh. And the next, Samual Anders. And the next, Galen Tyrol. "These are the resistance leaders." At least the ones they suspected, some with less justification than others. "What are you doing?"

"Coming up with a list of those that will need to be executed if the civil unrest gets worse."

"That's not your place," Caprica reacted instinctively to protect Baltar's authority, such as it was.

Three apparently could see her thought process and she gave a patronizing smile, "With our dear President's permission of course. Besides that's not the pile of people going on my list. Cavil is taking care of neutralizing Tigh, and removing the others would be too disruptive to the fabric of human society."

Putting the files back down on the pile she picked up the top three on the other pile. The top was Tom Zarek. She couldn't bring herself to have too much outrage at the prospect of Gaius' ungrateful vice president finding a sticky end. The next made her raise an eyebrow. "Cally Tyrol?"

"The wife of a resistance leader, her loss should take much of the fight out of him. And she murdered Eight in cold blood while on Galactica. It would do Boomer some good to feel power over her."

"You can't feel power over a dead body." Three didn't seem interested in rising to that bait, so Caprica flipped open the next file. It shouldn't have surprised her, but looking into the face of Laura Roslin did. She held up the picture to D'Anna by way of asking for justification for that one.

"You have to be kidding, she was the first on the list."

"You won't advocate killing a pyramid player because his loss would damage the fabric of the community but you don't think murdering their school teacher would make them explode?"

"Their anger will pass quickly and once it is done it is a permanent fact. Humanity gets no second chances at life and they do not get to face their murders again."

The last was a pointed comment directed at Six. She had broken their highest law. She had committed the first act of violence by one Cylon on another. And the Threes in particular had never forgiven her for it. She didn't respond though, but put the file down. "This is not why we came here."

"It's not why you came here, no, but your plan has failed and God's favor is shifting to those of us who are still Cylon at heart."

There was an insult in that statement. She was not, in Three's opinion, a real Cylon anymore. But what was she?

Three rose up from the desk and leaned against it looking right into Caprica's eyes. "You were wrong. God favors those who seek His plans, instead of making up their own."

And there it was, spoken aloud. The Cylons were abandoning her. They were turning their back on God, and searching for yet another false prophet.

Caprica wondered in her stunned silence, if that prophet was standing in front of her.


	5. Chapter 5

Caprica Six had been waiting for the Eight the humans called Sharon Agathon for several hours, spending most of the time on her knees praying. Somewhere deep beyond what one might think of as her programming, she knew that once baby Hera's mother knew where she was, she would come for her. Love was a factor beyond logical understanding and those who had never experienced it could never understand it. She supposed that was why she was the only one who was waiting for Sharon.

With Baltar gone off with D'Anna she was the only Cylon who had loved as deeply as Sharon had.

She wanted to help the child. That had been always part of her intention, at the forefront of her mind as she sat praying for Sharon's consciousness to download into the fresh body. But there was another motivation in Caprica's mind, one that scared her more than she could articulate; Caprica wanted to go back to Galactica with Sharon. She wanted to go to the humans.

She loved the Cylon. She loved her God. But love was not always about attraction, and it certainly wasn't always without pain. In fact, she reflected, love always seemed to be entirely about pain. Part and parcel. She had loved Baltar. She had loved him so deeply that for a time she thought it would drive her insane. She had loved him so deeply that she was willing to share him with D'Anna when he had formed a bond that she didn't understand. She had even tried to love her the way he loved her.

In the end it only led to pain. Gaius Baltar hurt everything he touched.

And the Cylon had hurt her too. Or more accurately they had disappointed her. Disappointment was not a word of indifference. You had to love something deeply to be disappointed in it. The Cylon had proven themselves just as flawed as their creators. But unlike the Cylons, she had started to believe the humans were redeemed by their flaws. Perhaps that was what she had loved so deeply in Gaius. His flaws. Humanity struggled through its limited life while the Cylon walked unchallenged.

Laura Roslin had once told her that humanity had worth in the struggle.

The Cylon was proving itself unworthy at the same time that humanity was proving itself the most noble. She needed to understand. She needed to understood what Sharon Agathon understood, and to do that she needed to go to Galactica.

That hadn't changed how terrified she was as she sat in co-pilot seat of the Raptor next to Sharon as the Colonial officer flew towards Galactica.

The regrets had started immediately. They had come on the waves of fear and hatred she could feel all around her as the humans pointed weapons at her. The regrets came as she sat alone in the cage they had set out for her.

The only time she didn't feel regret was on her knees, praying to God. It was than that she knew that she was in the right place, for the right reasons, even if they had yet to be revealed to her.

That was where she was when she heard the door open, and two guards come in with Laura Roslin. She had a certain confidence as President that she didn't carry with her on New Caprica, a cloak of righteousness—Caprica wasn't sure it suited her. She almost wanted to smile, as if this was a visit from an old friend, but she knew very well that this woman was no friend of hers.

"Do you have a name?" Roslin asked with a soft reassuring voice.

"They call me Caprica Six."

"Caprica." Six knew immediately that that wasn't a good thing. As she recalled, Roslin was from Caprica, and it suddenly occurred to her that the moniker might be offensive to her. The President seemed to be trying it on, repeating it a few times softly. "I'd like to help you, Caprica Six, but you will have to help me as well."

The Cylon's smile turned into a sneer. "Why? So you can throw me out an airlock? Do you really expect me to trust you? You of all people?"

Roslin walked a few paces in the cell, and then sat down in a chair and crossed her legs and took off her glasses to watch her. "No, not really. But I do expect that you won't have any other choice but to deal with me."

"Has Adama left Cylon prisoners to you now? Or have the two of you finally started frakking yet? Or are you frakking your Vice President? Or both?"

The slap that came from Roslin was harder than Caprica expected, and she might have returned it except for the marines who raised their weapons to point them at her head. Roslin the slut wasn't really how post people pictured her, that was for certain, and though there was speculation among the Seven, it really had been a low blow. Part of Six wondered if she has assumed that Roslin used sexual manipulation because that was what she would have done if their positions were reversed.

Of course not everything was about sex, and part of Six wondered if this monastic woman had more power for denying her sexuality than Six had for using it. There was something to be said in stringing men along.

"You want me to help you execute Baltar."

"I want your help in proving his guilt."

"Why would I help you?"

"You came here for a reason, Caprica Six."

"God sends us where we can serve best."

"God, or the choices we make?"

"A bit of both," the Cylon conceded.

"You are my toaster philosopher…" It suddenly seemed to occur to Roslin that they might have had this conversation before. "What about us draws you?"

"I want to understand why God loves you, when you worship false prophets and corrupt everything you touch." Caprica wondered if she was going to slap her again, but Roslin simply put on her glasses. "I want understand how you love without it hurting so much."

The other woman watched her. "You loved Baltar?"

Caprica nodded, and Roslin sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose, "Give him a trial. A fair trial, and I will help you prove his crimes."

Roslin seemed surprised, and Caprica shrugged. "I am hardly one to judge a traitor, but I would like to hear his defense as much as you. I want to know what makes someone betray their people."

I want to understand why I have betrayed mine.

fin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: The concept of this chapter was taken in part from a deleted scene posted at . I have not treated it like canon, but appropriate credit should be given for the writer of that scene, and for Mary McDonnell and Tricia Helfer, whose superb acting inspired the journey of this story.


End file.
